You’re Not Using Claude Too Much. You’re Using It Blind.

It’s 11:47 PM. You open Claude for \”one more look\” at that email—you know, the one you’ve been procrastinating on. Two minutes later, you’ve summarized a 40-page PDF, rewritten your resume, and asked Claude to explain the plot of Inception backward. You close your laptop and sleep like a baby. Then the invoice arrives.

That shock isn’t because you used Claude too much. It’s because you used it blind.

You don’t have an AI spending problem. You have an AI visibility problem.

Every time you send a prompt, you’re reaching into a slot machine. Will it cost 2 cents? 50 cents? A dollar and a half? Claude’s pricing page gives you rates, but your brain gives you amnesia. The numbers don’t exist until they’re already gone.

That’s why I nearly did a double-take when I saw a tiny menu bar app posted on Hacker News. It’s called tokease, and it does one simple thing: it sits in your Mac’s menu bar and shows your Claude usage—right there, before you hit Enter. Not in a settings page. Not in an email summary. On your screen, always.

The author, tpatrouillat, calls it \”small enough to read before you run it.\” That’s the whole pitch. No dashboards, no analytics, no \”AI insights.\” Just a number. The number you’re about to spend.

I installed it. The first time I loaded a heavy context and saw the token count climb in real time, I stopped myself from sending a three-page unrelated document. \”Do I really need this in context?\” I asked. The answer was no. It saved me money I didn’t even know I was losing.

That’s not a feature. That’s a new kind of relationship with AI.

The best technology doesn’t make you think. It makes you stop before you don’t.

Here’s the twist. This tool is so minimal it’s almost invisible—a few characters in your menu bar. Yet its entire purpose is to make something visible. It’s a tiny mirror for your spending habits. That’s exactly why it works. When usage is invisible, you ignore it. When it’s in your face, you can’t.

Anthropic isn’t going to build this. They benefit from your blind trust. The whole business model of AI is that you ask first and question the cost later. But you deserve better. You deserve to know, before every prompt, exactly what that prompt costs in real terms.

The price of AI isn’t the rate card. It’s the blind trust.

So yes, I’m telling you to install a menu bar app. But I’m not telling you to be more frugal or to use Claude less. I’m telling you to use Claude with your eyes open. The difference between a power user and a victim of surprise bills is the same as the difference between driving with a fuel gauge and driving with a gas can that might be empty.

You’re not using Claude too much. You’re using it blind.

Now go see the number.